• This young girl moved from London to Kosovo with her parents when she was eleven.
• At fourteen, she knew she couldn’t stay in Kosovo, so she moved away from her family to get started on her dream.
• She fulfilled her dream and even broke Guinness World Records.

However, when she turned 11, her parents told her they would no longer live in London. Instead, they were moving back to their native country. It was the end of primary school for the girl, and all her friends were also going to different schools, but none were in a foreign country.

Despite the significant change, the girl was excited to go to Kosovo and see her cousins who lived there. However, three years later, at 14, she told her parents she didn’t want to live there anymore. She moved away and went on to break Guinness World Records.

The girl was born to a Bosnian mother and a Kosovan father. In the 90s, her parents experienced war in their home country. Her mother and father were living with her paternal grandfather, the head of the Kosovo Institute of History.

Although the girl’s grandfather took pride in his career, it ended when the war broke out. She shared:

“Once the Serbians came in, they wanted a lot of the historians to rewrite the history of Kosovo. To change it – that Kosovo was always part of Serbia and never part of Yugoslavia. And my grandfather was one of those people who wouldn’t, so he lost his job because he didn’t want to write a history that he didn’t believe to be true.”

In 1992, the girl’s parents moved from Albania to London to seek refuge from the war. However, their parents stayed behind in Bosnia and Kosovo. The girl’s father never got to say goodbye to his father as he died of a heart attack the year the war ended when the borders were still closed. Despite all the heartache the couple had experienced, they welcomed their daughter in northwest London in 1995.

The girl said that she watched her parents work every day of her life. Her father was working toward becoming a dentist and her mother a lawyer when they were forced to flee their home country. Being in London forced them to take jobs in cafés and bars. They also went back to school.

Another thing that embarrassed her growing up was the fact that her parents looked different from others. In school, the boys would tell her how attractive her mother was, and the girls would say the same about her father, which she didn’t enjoy.

As a young girl, she was strong-willed and ambitious. She knew she wanted to be a star and figured she wouldn’t be able to make it happen living in Kosovo.

She tricked her parents into letting her go by telling them she wanted to attend an excellent British university and said she would need to do her GCSEs and A-levels in English to get there.

Her parents relented, and when she got back to London, she went to the Sylvia Young Theatre School and began recording demo tapes, which she uploaded to YouTube and Soundcloud.

Although she could have run wild in London without much parental supervision, the girl knew that her parents trusted her, and she needed to uphold her end of the deal. The only parental supervision she had was from the family friends she was staying with while in London. She joked that she was the mom of her friend group and always responsible.

With this responsibility came ambition. The girl knew she wanted to be a star and started contacting producers. When one offered a publishing deal, she found a lawyer who told her not to accept it. He then found her her current manager, leading to her being discovered.

The first concert she attended in Kosovo was Redman and Method Man, as hip-hop was massive in Kosovo then. She also wished to see performers like Nelly Furtado and Pink in her hometown, but they had yet to come.

When she finally became successful, she returned to Kosovo with the Sunny Hill Festival, which brings international artists to Kosovo. She hopes that this festival is something that the people in her hometown can enjoy for many years.

“Everything I speak about comes from my upbringing. Seeing my parents adapt to any situation, raise a family, work many jobs, go to university in the evening… I watched them sacrifice, yet I understand how lucky I am to have a British passport and to have come back to London for my career.”

However, she realized that it’s okay to be selfish and work on yourself before getting into a serious relationship and certainly before bringing any children into the world.

Who Is the Girl?

Dua Lipa is the girl with the name she couldn’t stand when she was a little girl. Despite all the adversity she faced growing up, she has now become a world-famous pop star and has broken many records.

In 2021, she also became the most listened-to female artist on Spotify, for which she landed another Guinness World Record. However, she remains humble and does not take too much note of the awards she has won, even though she has been nominated for 10 Grammys and has won three.

Lipa’s professional life is going well, and her personal life is on the up, too. She recently gained Albanian citizenship. A video shows her signing the papers and beaming from ear to ear as she is granted citizenship.